


5-Y-H-S

by Jkingsnake



Category: Borderlands
Genre: AU, M/M, Siren Rhys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6342814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jkingsnake/pseuds/Jkingsnake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short piece on how I feel about Rhys' Tattoos and where they came from. *This is based on my personal choices in TFTBL</p>
            </blockquote>





	5-Y-H-S

Numbers flooded the screen, looking like gibberish to anyone else, but to Rhys it spoke a clear language. The light blue fuzz of the screen glazed over his amber ECHO eye, the lifeless sapphire iris-still blood stained-was plugged into the Atlas computer. Rhys smirked softly, he thought about changing the name but he like the sound of it, and besides Atlas always had a way of getting under Jack’s skin. A deep sigh broke through the silence of the office. Rhys lightly ran a finger over the digital prison, even after all that he had done…  
Rhys couldn’t destroy him, every time he tried a horrible twisting feeling tore into his stomach and he felt sick with the very thought.  
“Huh?” Rhys snapped to attention, wiping a small amount of drool off his chin.  
The screen blinked rapidly with a message that desperately wanted to be seen.   
“Corrupted files found?” The keyboard clicked in response as he tried to answer his own question. The screen calmed after a few minutes of typing and Rhys slumped forward, as if he wanted to become one with the code on the screen.   
Most of the data in the discarded ECHO eye belonged to Jack, but none of his coding was corrupt from what Rhys could decipher. Even more alarming, comparing the programming to Nakayama’s original AI proved some of his fears to be true-the AI was capable of learning, adapting, and could easily be mistaken as a real emotional being to one who didn’t understand it was just a bunch of numbers. But what he had found was different, it was something that belonged to the original programming of the eye.  
Crisp night air flooded the area around the fast travel, it was late but Rhys didn’t have much patience when it came to himself. He and Jack had that in common. Elpis stared down at Pandora, no longer hidden in Helios’ shadow, she looked bigger and Helios looked so small, weak, broken up in to pieces that became a settlement over time. The fast travel hummed the all-familiar sound of finishing the teleportation and Rhys took a deep breath of the night air in.  
“Thank you for choosing Atlas for all your travel needs.” The machine beeped.  
Rhys stuck his tongue in his cheek to hold back a smirk; he couldn’t abandon the Hyperion voice until he found a better one for all the equipment. After Helios fell, that was the end of Hyperion and Rhys didn’t hesitate to scoop up all the leftover parts before any other company could get their hands on it, in a way it belonged to him. After all, Jack did make him C.E.O before trying to kill him.   
Rhys groaned at the large crowd that quickly gathered at his arrival, the Children of Helios revered him as a god and the first few times he loved the attention and was polite about it, but it had become a nuisance. If they wanted him to be a god so badly than they should have known not to crowd so closely.   
“What do I owe this visit?” Vaughn mockingly bowed.  
“Wow, you knew I was here fast.” Rhys held a closed fist up and Vaughn lightly tapped it.   
“But seriously, why are you here?” Vaughn reiterated.  
Rhys reached into his pocket and pulled out the eye gently, letting it swing freely. Vaughn turned without another word and gestured for him to follow. Even in the rubble, although it had been cleaned up quite a bit, Rhys could see it all in one piece and it was eerie. Vaughn hit at the side of the wall and a mechanical door opened, he looked back slightly and shot Rhys a broken smile.  
“Looks a little different, but I found my desk.”   
Rhys ran his hand over the edge and felt a nick in metal. “It’s yours alright, I did this when we changed my arm the first time.” He rubbed the mechanical shoulder.   
“I can’t believe how well you use it now, I thought you’d never get the hang of it. And remember your eye was color blind for a few weeks.” Vaughn chuckled, but it was short lived.  
Rhys dangled the eye from his hand and silently asked Vaughn for help.   
“You kept it?” He took it gently from Rhys’ hand.   
“It’s a part of me, I couldn’t destroy it without making sure I took all of my data out of it.”   
“So, what’s wrong with it?” Vaughn bit at his lip.  
“There’s a corrupted memory file and I can’t fix it. I thought maybe you could look at it.”   
Vaughn gripped the eye in his hand and shook, fighting with himself over breaking it himself. “It’s probably just part of Jack. I’m not a programmer or a data miner Rhys, why would you think I could help you?”  
“Because you made this.” He pointed at the eye. “I don’t know when or why, but I found other corrupted files and I saw you…”  
Vaughn chuckled nervously and backed away. “They’re just files.”   
“Why is this making you so uncomfortable? They’re not just files, these are my memories and they’re missing.” Rhys towered over Vaughn, his amber eye glowing in the dim night light.  
“I-I can’t.” Vaughn held the eye above his head. “I can’t let you remember.”  
“Don’t!” Rhys’ voiced cracked as he reached forward.   
Vaughn closed his eyes tightly and Rhys’ heart shattered with the pieces of the eye scattered among the floor. Rhys collapsed to his knees and stared blankly ahead, the room faded around him and everything became a black twisted space.  
“I’m sorry. It’s for the best.” Vaughn pat him on the shoulder.  
Rhys rolled him off. “Fine, if you won’t tell me. Then I’ll find someone who will.”   
“No one else knows.”  
Rhys stared at him while standing up, briefly breaking the gaze to glance at the broken shards.  
“That’s not fair.”   
“I’ll tell you what’s not fair, you’ve obviously been hiding something from me for, I don’t even know how long and you don’t want to tell me. Me, your best friend…it hurts.” Rhys pulled at his jacket.  
Uncomfortable air filled the room; Vaughn tightened his ponytail with a sigh, and walked around to the back of his desk. “I know what remembering will do to you, but since you were honest with me about Jack it’s only fair.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a memory stick.  
Rhys reached forward eagerly, leaning into the desk as Vaughn kept the memory stick away from his reach.  
“If something goes wrong...” Vaughn pierced his lips together.  
“I know.” Rhys nodded.  
“Are you sure you want this?”   
“With how badly you want to keep it away from me, yes.” Rhys put his hand out, palm up.  
Vaughn dropped it with hesitation, and walked around to sit on his desk. Rhys held the stick gingerly in his fingers; afraid that with one wrong move it would disappear from existence.   
“See you on the other side.” Rhys smirked without confidence.   
“I’ll be here when you wake up.” Vaughn smiled. “Oh, and don’t be alarmed but I may have recorded my own personal thoughts on there.”   
Rhys shook his head and sat back down on the floor before plugging in the stick and going into a sleep like state as his mind downloaded the files. Vaughn gripped at the edge of the desk and lightly touched the nick in the metal, feeling his eyes burn and water at the edges.  
-In the past, Helios-  
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Vaughn adjusted his glasses and squinted at the screen. He attempted to make a call but knew as soon as he dialed it was a lost cause. He was invisible on Helios and knew it…he was invisible everywhere and knew it.  
Fast travels were the easiest and quickest way to get around, but Vaughn didn’t trust them, he preferred the time-honored tradition of walking. It took him a good half hour to get from his small office in accounting to the research labs in R&D, accumulating bruises along the way from numerous people and bots pushing him out of their way. He sighed and held his ID card over the lock. The accounting department housed hundreds of employees. However, R&D was solely on Vaughn. It had the most interaction, mostly via ECHO net, with Handsome Jack.   
“Sometimes, I think you guys just like to torture me with that walk.” Vaughn forced a smile.  
“Ugh, why are you here again?” A scientist rolled her eyes.  
“I’ll just get right to the point Dr. Grey, why are you asking for almost five times the normal amount of funding you get for the year?” Vaughn rubbed at his arms nervously.   
Dr. Grey glanced around at her fellow researchers and than back at Vaughn. “Why don’t you ask the Boss? He’s the one who gives us these projects.” She grinned.  
Vaughn grimaced he hated contacting Jack. Especially since in the past few years he had been slowly getting more and more unstable to talk to. A million things to say back ran through his head, but instead Vaughn bit at his lip and pushed passed the researchers, walking further into the R&D department. As per usual no one tried to stop him, even as he was clearly heading into an area he shouldn’t be. Vaughn froze; he couldn’t even complete his step as he heard Jack’s voice come out of a cracked door. He leaned next to it and stayed out of sight, leaning over slightly to peer in and stare at something he had never seen before.  
A Siren.  
“I did what I had to, why couldn’t she have seen that?” Jack’s voice wavered between upset and angry.  
“She only saw what you let her see, as much as you say you didn’t blame her for her mother’s death, you know on some level that you did.”  
Vaughn pressed his back into the metal of the wall; the Siren had a beautiful voice, deep but with a delicate feel.  
Jack reached out, hands ready to take a tight grip around the Siren’s neck, but he backed off with a heavy sigh. “I had to do it…She was everything I had left, I have nothing left to lose.”  
“If you go to that Vault, you won’t come back.” The Siren put a hand down on Jack’s shoulder.  
Jack leapt back at the contact, and traced an invisible mark over his masked face. “I know.”  
Dr. Grey ran passed and Vaughn turned his head down to hide, Jack’s attitude immediately shifted as soon as she entered the room.   
“Alright Cupcake, I’m dying to hear some good news.” Jack hissed the last two woods through clenched teeth.  
Dr. Grey took a large step back before talking. “We can’t continue with this experiment, she’s degrading just like her sisters before her, she’s already lost an arm.”  
“Hey yeah, even though I’m dying over here I’d like to be properly gendered, thank you.” The Siren waved his arm at her.  
Dr. Grey scoffed and continued to speak. “As I was saying, she–” A shot from a Hyperion pistol cut her off and she collapsed to the floor with a hole in the center of her forehead.   
“Let’s find someone with at least an ounce of respect to watch over you while you die.” Jack put the pistol in his holster.  
Vaughn tried to leave without making a sound but whimpered while trying to hold his breath. Before he could take a step, he could feel Jack’s shadow weighing down on him.   
“Hey short-stack get in here.” Jack grabbed Vaughn by the arm and violently pulled him into the room. “You know about this project don’t yah? Good.”  
“I-uhh…” Vaughn stuttered.   
“You’re supposed to be scientists down here, and none of you know how to talk properly. Do you know about this, yes or no?” Jack threw his hands up. “Come on now, I have places to be.”  
Vaughn caught a quick glance of him running a hand over his gun. “Yes.”   
“That wasn’t so hard, now was it princess?”  
The Siren chuckled but it faded quickly, he walked as far as he could away from the life support mechanism and stood in front of Jack. They were almost the same height, the Siren being a little taller.  
“We’ll see each other again, won’t we?” He asked.  
Jack shook his head. “Nope, I’m immortal baby, but you, you’re going to die here for good. I’ll miss yah.” He winked.  
Jack placed his hand on Vaughn’s back and walked out of the room with him. “Make sure you get all of the data before he disintegrates like the others did, I don’t need Atlas and their Vault finding project beating out mine…stay by his side.”   
“O–of course. Where are you going sir?” Vaughn pierced his lips together, afraid that he spoke out of turn.  
“I have some Vault hunters to kill.” Jack stomped down the hallway with a murderous tone.  
Vaughn listened to a fast travel click on and then headed back into the room, the Siren was sitting down with his head in his hands, staring at where Jack had walked off. Vaughn paced around the room and examined him, his arm and chest was covered in tattoos that had a faint golden glow to them. He had small ethereal wings to compliment them as well and Vaughn was taking it all in.   
“Never seen a Siren before have you?” He asked.  
Vaughn jumped. “Is it that obvious?”  
“Heh. If it makes you feel any better, neither have I. While I have, but not in a long time.” He sighed.  
“What do you mean?” Vaughn sat down across from him, and saw that one of his eyes was blind and eridium was pulsing through it.  
“Well, I always wanted to work here, and then I got the call that I passed the entrance test. And so had all of my sisters, but they never applied, it was all just a plan to get us here.” He sighed and scratched at the spot where his arm was disintegrating.   
“Do you have a name I can call you by?” Vaughn interrupted.  
“Oh right, I don’t remember my name…uh Jack calls…called me HY-S, for Hyperion Siren project but I’m the fifth one. So, 5-HY-S I guess.” He shrugged.  
Vaughn picked up the folder Dr. Grey had been holding and it said exactly that, but the 5 was written a little crooked making it look more like an R.   
“How about Rhys? That’s a little easier for me to say, I’m Vaughn.” He smiled.   
“I like it.” He was still distracted by the spot Jack had left from.  
“Did you want to talk about something?”   
“Huh? Oh, I’ll explain by finishing my story. One of my sisters started showing signs of being a Siren and was immediately contacted by Hyperion, but she wanted nothing to do with them. I on the other hand wanted everything to do with them, so I started answering the calls as her. Three of the experiments here were my sisters and I. We’re triplets, so we all had potential for Siren abilities.” Rhys paused briefly to smirk and the tattoos lit up a little brighter.   
“What is it?” Vaughn smiled.  
“My sisters and the other two test subjects didn’t last long, the scientists here didn’t really care about us. Jack took a special interest in me, said I reminded him of his Angel. He visited me often and we talked about…well everything. He cared, but he’s been different lately…it doesn’t matter now, he’s not coming back.”   
“How can you know that?”   
Rhys blinked and the eye filled with Eridium changed to the Vault symbol. “I can see it happening, I can see all of them, and it’s what’s killing me. It’s tearing me apart, I already lost my arm and my eye has a couple minutes at best.”  
Vaughn flipped through the folder and read the test results from the day. “If we disconnect the Eridium now…there’s a chance you’ll survive.”  
“You’re not a scientist, are you?” Rhys teased.  
“Nope, I’m an accountant.”   
“I don’t have anything to lose, so I say we go for it. Ah, shit that hurts!” Rhys hissed in pain and grabbed at his face. His eye had reached its final moments and was disintegrating, trying to take the rest of his body with him.  
Vaughn rushed around, finding a body bag and jumping up above the counter to try and see if there was an empty office nearby. He’d need a place to make a new arm and now an eye for Rhys, if this succeeded.   
“If you’re going to do something, do it now!” Rhys yelled.  
Vaughn turned off all the equipment in the room and Rhys fell over, his tattoos lost their glow and faded to a light blue.   
“I should put an exercise bike in my office.” He struggled to get Rhys into the bag.  
Vaughn pulled Rhys into a corner to hide him and turned all the power back on in the room, once it was fully powered up it gave off an alarm and the room flooded with scientists.   
“That’s the end of this project, shut it down.” One of them said.   
Once the room was empty Vaughn felt the bag and let out a breath of relief when he felt it rise from Rhys’ steady breathing. He dragged him down the hallway and into an empty office that he had seen. Vaughn hesitated above the tools, he had never had a friend before and he had to fabricate memories to keep Rhys from activating the Siren powers again…adding in a few of them together wouldn’t be that bad.   
He had to take out all memories of Jack. “Maybe I’ll keep one, of him spitting on you, so you won’t like him as much.”  
–Present Day Helios–  
Rhys groaned and sat up, holding his head and yanking the memory stick out. He placed the stick on the desk next to Vaughn and walked out with speaking.   
“Rhys…you know I had to.” Vaughn defended.   
A cold night breeze answered him and Rhys stood with his back to him, staring up at the sky where Helios used to be.  
“Rhys–”  
“Shh. I’m thinking.” He held up his hand. “You lied to me, we weren’t even friends.”  
“I’m sorry.” Vaughn didn’t know what else to say.  
“Why didn’t you just give it a chance, I would have been your bro, I’m your bro now.”   
Vaughn stayed quiet, confused by the choice of words. “You–you’re not mad?”   
“Not at you, I understand everything that you did and I thank you for it. Without you I’d be dead, you could have just left me there. There is someone I am upset with, and I’d like to speak to him alone.” Rhys pulled out a drive.   
“I should have known you’d keep a copy, are you sure about this?”   
“I have a kill code this time, don’t worry about me.” Rhys held up a closed fist.  
Vaughn smirked and jumped off the ground to fist bump him. Rhys walked away from Helios and made sure there weren’t any skags around before turning back and seeing that Vaughn was still watching. He held the drive tightly in his hand and touched the tattoos on the exposed part of his chest before plugging the drive in. It only took a few seconds for Jack to show up and immediately threaten Rhys. Vaughn watched Rhys calm someone he couldn’t see and then bright golden wings appear behind him, the tattoos glowing through his sleeve.   
“Who’s immortal now?” Rhys smiled.


End file.
